


a little bit of a no-good thing

by yoonbot (iverins)



Category: Day6 (Band), TWICE (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, mentions of TWICE members, nayeon-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 04:26:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16737082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iverins/pseuds/yoonbot
Summary: Nayeon isnota bad kid. Nayeon is also not supposed to be on the front page of Dispatch, or trending number one on Naver, or caught in a damning series of photographs where she's got her mouth slotted against Brian's, his hands cupping a face that is very clearly hers.Or: Nayeon's watched way too many teen rom-coms over the years. A fake dating AU.





	a little bit of a no-good thing

**Author's Note:**

> **this is purely fictional**
> 
> after all these years, i'm still into the idea of this crackship, huh...   
>  a big thank you to Ellie/Naladot for encouraging me to write this fic! ♡

For the record, Nayeon is _not_ a bad kid.

Nayeon is not supposed to be sitting in a conference room the day after new year's, twenty-three minutes before her actual appointment time. It's on what they call the older side of the company building, and the heater starting up again rumbles through her palms, sweaty and pressed flat against the plastic table. She wants to go home.

Nayeon is also not supposed to be on the front page of Dispatch, or trending number one on Naver, or caught in a damning series of photographs where she's got her mouth slotted against Brian's, his hands cupping a face that is very clearly hers.

In her defense, Nayeon doesn't usually break rules. Loves to follow them actually, and even the thought of skipping one class as a trainee made her heart rate spike out of fear. There was a kind of comfort in having the guidelines laid out for her – all she had to do was color within the lines and not make the sun purple instead of yellow. There'd never been the need for her to be called into an emergency meeting with a higher-up before. Case in point, Nayeon _had to be_ a good kid.

And Nayeon, a good kid, is resolutely never drinking again.

The door opens, snapping her out of being half-asleep and half-lost in a daydream trying to predict the trajectory of her career now that the news is out. It's finally eight thirty, and Brian's holding the door for the management representative, right on time. He takes the seat beside hers. Nayeon looks away as soon as their eyes meet.

"So," the representative asks after a lengthy rundown of the situation that went in one of Nayeon's ears and straight out the other. “Are you two dating?”

"No," Nayeon says just as Brian says yes.

Brian frowns, forehead creasing. "Yes," Nayeon says just as Brian says no.

The representative sighs. She puts down her pen and leans back in her chair. "Look," she says. It looks like she just wants to go home, and Nayeon feels worse knowing that. "All I want to know is what you guys want the company statement to say."

"Oh," Brian replies in the absence of anything else. He glances at Nayeon, like he expects her to say something too. The clock keeps ticking.

Nayeon just had to go and color the goddamn sun purple _once_ , didn't she.

 

 

 

 

The way it starts is this:

Nayeon doesn't have a particular ideal type. That, unfortunately, has no correlation to finding boys in rock bands ten times more attractive than she finds the average male, like every cliché teen rom-com has taught her to.

At the end of every year, the company throws a huge year-end celebration. It's the one acceptable time that they can all get spectacularly, off-their-asses drunk with some of the people they've known since middle school and not reprimanded for it (aside from the time two years ago when BamBam, attempting a backflip, broke a light at the restaurant. Nayeon wishes she’d been there to see it), which is fully taken advantage of by most.

The unofficial motto of JYP Nation according to Jackson goes a little like this: we’re a family. We train together. We cry together. We laugh together. We debut together. We get absolutely _smashed_ together. End quote. Which is why Nayeon – who doesn't even like alcohol due to her “taste buds of an elementary schooler,” according to Jeongyeon – ends up drinking more than she’s used to and stepping outside for some air.

“You okay?” someone asks as her eyelids are starting to grow heavy. She snaps her head around too quickly and the entire universe tilts for a second. When it re-rights itself, Brian is standing beside where she’s sitting, looking at her.

“Yeah,” Nayeon tries lightly. Her tongue feels about five times heavier than it should. “I’m…” she searches for the appropriate word. “ _Peachy._ ”

Brian laughs at that. “Peachy,” he repeats, sounding amused, sitting down next to her on the bench. Nayeon’s always liked the way his smile lit up his entire face. “I guess that’s better than nauseous.”

If Nayeon set this scene in a warped, teen rom-com alternate universe, Sungjin would be her older brother, Jae and Wonpil Sungjin’s friends, and Dowoon one of their little brothers. And Brian, Brian would be that one friend of Sungjin’s that Nayeon’s always wanted the attention of, the one that Nayeon runs to open the door for, the one that Nayeon’s harbored a little crush on since she was fifteen.

The problem is, Nayeon’s way past her teenage years, gave up her first kiss to a web drama that didn’t even make it to air, and is convinced that the only reason she keeps fantasizing about love is because of some sort of hormonal imbalance that results when you don’t use your young adult days to experiment with it. Oh, and not to mention, they’re both idols.

She hiccups. “Waaaay better than nauseous,” she drawls before turning to look at Brian with a frown. “Do you think I’m drunk? Are you not drunk?”

“I don’t know,” Brian tells her, a lilt in his voice like he's about to tell a joke. He’s always liked to tease her, anyone younger than him in general, but Nayeon’s never really minded when it came to him. “Do _you_ think you’re drunk?”

Nayeon closes her eyes to stop the world from spinning. When she opens them, Brian’s face is closer to hers than she remembers it being. “You,” she starts, pointing a finger. There’s something in his eyes, even darker in the night, that Nayeon can’t make out. She squints. “You look like you want to kiss me.”

He’s not smiling anymore. A moment of silence, them staring at each other, passes. Nayeon's suddenly afraid that he'll move away.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Brian finally asks, quiet, more to her mouth than to her. When the fog from his breath dissipates, Nayeon realizes she’s staring her fantasy right in the face. It makes her feel startlingly sober.

Nayeon answers by leaning forward and pressing her lips against his, soft. And then all at once, Brian’s hands are gentle and warm on the sides of her face and he’s moving his mouth against hers in a way that reminds Nayeon that _oh,_ that's right, he’s dated before, and it’s so much better than Nayeon’s first kiss on that drama set. Outside is cold where they are, in the dead of winter, but Brian’s breath is hot against her mouth and her heart’s pounding faster than it had after her first few drinks when she became old enough for alcohol, and she draws herself even closer to him until she can feel the heat radiating off his shoulders through her coat. Nayeon never wants him to stop.

And, well, that's kind of the way that ends.

 

 

 

 

Here's the thing:

If they say YES – It's more or less a lie, but things make sense. People usually kiss when they're in a relationship, and idols are, underneath all those layers of foundation, in fact people, so it's natural for them to be in love with someone else. The universe doesn't explode, Brian and Nayeon don't get hate comments other than from fans who are blinded by their rose-tinted glasses of love. This is the safe answer.

If they say NO – It's more or less the truth, but things go bad. At this point, there's no way to pretend that isn't them in the picture, no matter how shameless their company's statement can get. Idols have time to mess around? They're not working hard enough. Nayeon isn't all that innocent and Brian writes sad lyrics because she broke his heart. She gets burned at the stake.

Maybe guidelines aren't always so great after all.

 

 

 

 

Nayeon’s just entered “what do people do when they date” into the search engine when Jeongyeon jumps onto her bed.

“Oh my god,” she says, waving her phone screen in Nayeon’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Nayeon’s starting to lose feeling in her legs from where Jeongyeon's crushing her. She swats the phone out of her face until it’s a respectable distance away, and then grabs Jeongyeon’s wrist to steady it enough to read it. _CONFIRMED: Twice Nayeon and Day6 Young K are in a relationship, JYP says,_ stares her back in the face. The company works faster than she thought.

“Why do I need to tell you when you can just read the news?” Nayeon jokes, sticking her tongue out. Jeongyeon just sits on her in retaliation. “And it’s not like – ”

Nayeon stops herself.

“So,” Brian had said once the representative had finished scribbling whatever she needed into her notepad and walked out of the room. He readjusted his snapback, combing back his unstyled hair with a hand. In the brief moment without the hat shadowing his face, Nayeon realized the true extent of his dark circles. “I guess this means we’re dating now.”

Nayeon twisted her hands. “It’s not like we have to actually, you know,” she looked over at him. He raised an eyebrow, arms crossed against his chest. Nayeon swallowed. “Go on _dates_ or anything. They can just,” she squeezed her hands together so hard it almost hurt. Brian kept looking at her. “Make the statement and we can, uh, move on with our regular lives?”

“Are you prepared for the questions you’re probably going to get the next time you have an interview?” Brian sighed, shaking his head. “Or the possible backlash? Or what you’re going to say to your members?” He rubbed at his jaw with the heel of his hand. “God, what am I going to say to my members?”

Nayeon hadn’t really thought that far. She’d expected to just tell them the truth – they’d understand, Brian was pretty high up on everyone’s _if you had to date someone within the company_ list. But what if one of them said something that exposed their lie on broadcast? What if _she_ said something? Nayeon was notoriously bad at keeping her own secrets, after all.

“What are you doing?” Brian had said, watching as Nayeon sunk further and further down into her chair until she was almost completely under the table.

“Trying to escape reality,” she muttered. He actually laughed at that, and even harder when she fell off her chair completely, and helped her stand back up. It made her feel slightly better knowing that she could still make him smile, but, at the same time, worse knowing that she had bigger things to worry about. Two steps forward, three steps back.

Jeongyeon goes for her stomach. “And it’s not like?” she repeats, waiting out Nayeon’s giggle fit for her reply.

“I was saying,” Nayeon heaves. “It’s not like anything’s really different?” There’s an uncertainty in her own voice that she hears. Clears her throat. “I mean, we were friends before. We’re just...closer friends now.”

Jeongyeon wiggles her eyebrows at her. “Closer friends who do not-so-friendly things,” she grins, making a kissy face. Nayeon kicks her in the butt.

“You wish,” Nayeon snorts, rolling her eyes. She throws a plushie in Jeongyeon’s face. “Get out!”

“Hey, I live here too!” Jeongyeon insists. Nayeon chucks a Pikachu at her this time. “Fine, fine, fine!” she says, getting up off the bed. “I’ll leave you alone so you can call your _boyfriend._ ”

Nayeon collapses back into her bed once the door’s closed, covers her face with her hands, and groans.

 

 

 

 

_So how’d it go?_

Two hours later, in the middle of eating a cup ramen, she gets a reply: _How’d what go?_

 _Talking to your members ㅎㅎㅎ_ She puts her phone back on the table face down, promising herself that she won’t check again until she’s finished eating. She burns her tongue slurping up the next chopstick-full of noodles.

It’s not until Nayeon’s finished folding her laundry and throwing Sana, Jihyo, and Mina’s onto their beds that she lets herself look at her phone. Twenty minutes after she’d sent her last message, Brian had replied with a simple _Alright._

Nayeon knows she doesn’t have the right to be irritated. Nayeon also doesn’t keep checking her phone every seven minutes after turning in early for the night, opening their conversation to see if he’s added anything to the four chat bubbles already there.

The next week, everyone’s back at the company building. Twice is preparing for another comeback, GOT7’s got most of the music rooms booked, the Stray Kids are still using the old dance studio, and Day6 are holed up in their own studio with their instruments, as per usual. In the middle of a water break, Nayeon _does not_ huff all the way over there, wait until the song they’re playing is done, watching through the unfrosted pane of glass that gives her a great view of Brian on his bass, and knock afterwards, asking if she can talk to one of them alone. Jae whistles as Brian follows her out.

“Is something wrong?” he asks once they’re down the hallway. Nayeon takes a deep breath in, purposefully.

She deflates right before she can say it. “No,” she blurts. Brian looks confused. “I mean, kind of. I – You know – ”

“Mmhmm,” Brian hums. Now it looks like he’s trying his best to hold back a laugh.

“Can you just update me?” Nayeon finally says. “Like, what is _alright?_ Is it ‘alright, Wonpil fainted because I told him the truth’ or alright, like, _actually_ alright?”

“Oh,” he says. He’s grinning now, and Nayeon's starting to feel like she's gotten worked up for no reason. “It was actually alright. I was just kind of vague about it, and Sungjin went a little leader on me, but everything’s going a lot better than I thought it would.” And it really was, even for Nayeon – the comments under the article had been surprisingly supportive for the both of them. “I even think one of our songs was back on the charts for a little bit.” He glances down at her and it strikes Nayeon that she's forgotten how much taller he is. “How did your members take it?”

Jeongyeon aside, Momo had been jealous, the rest of them happy for her, and Tzuyu had showed no interest in the new development. “Pretty much the same,” she summarizes, scuffing her sneakers against the floor.

“Oh, and just saying,” Brian starts after an awkward beat of silence. When Nayeon looks up from her shoes, there’s a sheepish smile on his face. “I’m not really good at messaging. Next time you need something, just call me.”

Nayeon tries to swallow down the fluttering of her heart, swelling and soaring against her ribcage. “Just call you,” she echoes carefully. It’s like a joke before the punchline, and Nayeon half-expects Brian to be kidding.

“Yeah,” he says, sounding quite earnest. “And if anyone asks, tell them your _boyfriend,_ ” he holds up his hands to make air quotes, “has to talk to you. Or serenade you. Or whatever you want.”

Nayeon opens her mouth. Closes it. Brian laughs, tells her she looks like a fish, and then walks her back to her practice room, patting her on the head before he leaves. Nayeon only lets herself think that for them not really being in a relationship, this feels almost too real, once he’s gone.

 

 

 

 

The funny thing about being an idol is that sometimes a news site tells you things before the actual person does.

“You’ve written a song about me?” Nayeon laughs into her phone as she’s scrolling through the article on her laptop. She’s in Japan for a music show special, and usually they’d just fly back right after the recording but they’ve got a fansign the next morning. It’s very much a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone situation.

Brian’s chuckle seems so far away and tiny on the other side of the line, all the way in Seoul. If Nayeon thinks really hard about it, she can make out the mental image of his smile and the way it reaches his eyes. “Not yet,” he says. “Did you read past the headline?”

Nayeon finally gets to that part of the article. “Oh,” she replies, trying not to let the disappointment show in her voice. She shouldn’t even be disappointed in the first place, and she shouldn’t have felt so giddy when she’d looked up her name an hour ago and thought that it was more than maintaining the front of their fake relationship. “I just got there.”

Brian makes an indiscernible noise of acknowledgement. “How’s Japan?” he asks, like he’s never been.

Nayeon snorts. “I was outside for, like, ten minutes,” she frowns. “And now we’re in the hotel, and I think it’s snowing.” She closes her laptop and falls back into the fluffy hotel bed. “I’m booooooored.”

He laughs again. Nayeon puts the call on speaker and places her phone beside her head on the pillow. “You should go to sleep then,” he says.

“Jihyo’s in the bathroom,” she yawns. After stretching out, she curls back in on herself and wishes that Brian would suggest something else. “What are you doing right now?”

“Working,” Brian tells her. She can hear Sungjin’s accent faintly in the background. “Which I kind of have to get back to. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nayeon mumbles. Now that he mentioned it, she’s starting to feel a little sleepy. “G’night.”

Half an hour later, Jihyo shakes her awake, telling her to go wash up, and Nayeon realizes that she forgot to hang up the call.

Another funny thing about being an idol: you really don’t have the time or energy to date like a normal person does.

This, technically, makes it easier for them to pull off the entire charade. They talk occasionally over the phone, and they see each other sometimes in the hallways at the company, and other times Nayeon tells her members she’s calling Brian when she’s actually calling her parents. There’s no suspicion – Nayeon’s out for twenty hours at a time during their comeback, and she needs the remaining four to either sleep or practice more.

This, however, doesn’t mean that the full brunt of her feelings don’t come back and slap her the face when she runs into Brian again, finally fully conscious.

Nayeon’s thought about it. He’d wanted to kiss her, and she’d wanted to kiss him. That had to mean that he – deep down, somewhere in his heart – had to _at least_ like her a little, right? It didn’t have to mean that he’d want it to be more than that, or be in a relationship with one-ninth of the nation’s new girl group or whatever, but that had to count for something, didn’t it?

Nayeon’s also thought this: he didn’t seem so enthused about the outcome of that meeting with the higher-up two months ago, the one that ended with the statement of their fake relationship being confirmed. And then she's back to square one and sorting through it all over again.

He’s staring at her with an eyebrow raised. That’s when Nayeon realizes that she’s just been standing there, doing all this mental math. “Hi,” she squeaks out.

Brian’s face softens before his lips pull up at the corners. “Hi,” he says, that teasing lilt in his voice, and Nayeon doesn’t think it’s hers to miss but she did. “It’s been a while.”

Nayeon swallows. His hair is still black but styled so it’s out of his face, and there’s an earring dangling from his right ear. He looks nothing like he did that night two months ago, when he’d brought his face close to hers and she kissed him, but she feels the want to travel back to then swell inside of her. “Are you guys filming something today?” she asks instead.

“Nothing official.” He leans his shoulder against the wall. “Why?”

“Oh,” Nayeon echoes. _Because you look really handsome,_ is what her thoughts unhelpfully supply next. Thankfully, her brain-to-mouth filter is actually working now that she’s slept more than four hours. “No reason.”

Brian tilts his head in an exaggeration of a question. “Okay,” he grins. It’s like he knows what she’s really been thinking. But there was no way, because if he could, Nayeon thinks she would’ve been rejected and over him by now. “If you say so.”

He pats her on the head, still smiling. “I’ll see you around, Nayeon.”

Nayeon watches him walk away. If this was some scene set in a warped, teen rom-com alternate universe, she could call his name. Chase after him, hold onto his hand, and tell him how her heart beats a little differently when he’s around, how she thinks about him all the time, how she wants this thing between them to be real. How she wants to kiss him again.

But Nayeon’s an idol, so she does none of that.

 

 

 

 

Okay, so here’s the _real_ problem:

Nayeon has more than a little crush on Brian. In fact, Nayeon thinks she’s more or less actually in love with him.

End fucking quote.

 

 

 

 

“What are you doing?”

Nayeon blinks from where she’s been staring off into space. “What?” she says. It’s one of their rare free days now that their promotion cycle’s over, and instead of going out like some of the other girls, Nayeon’s just been lounging around their dorm.

Jeongyeon takes the seat on the couch next to her and actually turns on the TV. “You look like you’re actually,” she pauses for dramatic effect. “ _Thinking._ ” She looks slightly horrified.

Nayeon slaps her elbow. “Is that a problem?” she frowns. “Can’t I just have some peace and quiet?”

Jeongyeon looks at her as if she’s grown another head. “No,” she starts slowly. “But you’re not really a thinker. You just kinda,” she waves her arms around vaguely, “do stuff. And regret it later.” She pauses for enough to let Nayeon take in the weight of that statement and feel offended by it. “Is this about Brian?”

“Yes,” Nayeon says instinctively. And then she remembers that Jeongyeon doesn’t know about how she’s been dying internally from being in love with her fake boyfriend, who no one else knows is her fake boyfriend, when he definitely doesn’t feel the same way. “No.”

“Okaaay,” Jeongyeon replies. Nayeon glares at her. “That’s super convincing.”

Jeongyeon sighs when Nayeon just keeps giving her the silent treatment, lips pressed firmly into a line. “Look, if you guys are having a lover’s spat or whatever,” she says as Nayeon’s determinately keeping her eyes on the Doraemon episode that’s playing. “Just try and sort it out, you know? Communicate?”

Nayeon side-eyes her. “What movie did you learn this from?” she grumbles. Jeongyeon has even less relationship experience than her, and Nayeon’s not even dating for real.

“It’s like every Netflix series answer,” Jeongyeon laughs. “And this is Brian we’re talking about. I thought you’d fight harder because you’ve been in love with him since, like, you first started training.”

“ _Have not._ ” It’s a lie, Nayeon totally has been. They’d practically grown up together, five years was long for anyone, and Nayeon’s crush on Brian had only aged like wine, growing stronger and stronger with time. Other than being super good at everything as a trainee and physically hot, Brian had also always been super kind to her – helping her with her math homework, her singing, and, during a brief stint, her rapping – and he’d always smile at whatever ridiculous thing she’d do to ease the mood before monthly evaluations. Which might've helped feed her predebut ego, but it wasn’t _her_ fault that Brian gave her positive reinforcement every time by laughing.

Jeongyeon rolls her eyes. “You totally have.”

“I just,” Nayeon sighs. She squeezes her fingers together and leans her head against Jeongyeon's shoulder. “I’m scared. What if he doesn’t like me as much as I like him?”

Jeongyeon laughs at that. “Nayeon,” she starts, wrapping her arms around her in an awkward but rare hug. “If he’s willing to announce to the world that he’s dating you when our military fanboys are like _that,_ then he’s got to like you a lot more than you think.”

 

 

 

 

Nayeon plans. Nayeon doesn’t usually plan – usually wings things along the way instead and, if she’s lucky, things don’t turn out completely disastrous – but this is what she comes up with:

1) Speak to Brian. Alone.  
2) Tell him how she really feels, hopefully without tripping over her words too much.  
3) That’s, unfortunately, as far as she’s thought this over.

Step One already proves to be hard. Scheduled after the Stray Kids’ comeback is Day6’s, and they’re always still working on something every time Nayeon passes their studio, even after dawdling for an hour after dance practices that end late. The cowardly part of Nayeon tells her to just shoot him a long text message encompassing everything she wants to say, grammar-corrected and all, but she always falls asleep in the middle of formulating where to start.

It’s not until two weeks after Jeongyeon’s whole pep talk that Nayeon tiptoes to look through the glass door and finally sees Brian alone, frowning at his notepad in concentration. She takes a deep breath and knocks before walking in.

“Hey,” she says. Brian looks up at her. He’s wearing the same snapback from that meeting all those months ago, she notices.

“Hey,” he smiles back, a little tired. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. It’s then that Nayeon realizes that she hasn’t seen him like this, face-to-face, in nearly a month, and that she has no idea how to execute Step Two despite the numerous scenarios she’s been running through her head. Maybe the text wasn’t such a bad idea.

“I, um,” she starts. She closes the door and coughs. “I just came from dance practice.”

Brian puts down his pencil. It skitters off the notepad, held at a slant against his knee from where’s sitting on a stool. He glances at it, but doesn’t move to pick it up. He flicks his gaze back to Nayeon’s. “Okay,” he says, waiting for her to continue.

Nayeon can’t let go of the doorknob. “I…” She inhales. “If you’re busy, I can leave!” she blurts out all at once, Coward Nayeon taking over. “I just...wanted to say hi.”

Brian slips off the stool, walks over to pick up his pencil, and places it down on the table in the front of the room with the notepad. Then he approaches Nayeon, hands in the pockets of his joggers, before stopping a good few feet away. “You know,” he laughs, a little humorlessly. “I wish you’d just say what you came here to tell me.”

Nayeon feels her heart stop. “What do you mean?” she asks. Well, this is going way worse than she expected.

“You keep looking at me like you have a lot to say,” Brian says plainly, not exasperated, taking a step closer. “But you don’t ever _say it._ And don’t think I haven’t noticed you looking in on us practicing these past few weeks.”

“Oh.” All the heat rushes to her face. It’s completely unfair that Brian can read her like a book while she’s scrabbling onto the few pieces of him she’s found over the years, trying to put together a puzzle that’s doomed to begin with. “Oh.”

Brian’s looking at her. Nayeon looks to where the pencil and notepad sit on the table, past his left hip. When she glances back up, Brian’s still looking at her, patiently.

If this was some scene set in Nayeon’s warped, teen rom-com alternate universe, she wouldn’t have to say anything. Brian would just _know,_ and he’d gather her up in his arms and kiss her again like he did back in the dead of winter, and that’d be that. Cue the credits.

But this isn’t a movie. It’s not even one of Jeongyeon’s Netflix series, and Nayeon’s been kidding herself this entire time in all the different possibilities of this moment, playing through in her head. Because in all those variations, it all comes back to Nayeon having to tell Brian how she actually feels, and her plans always stop right when she opens her mouth to put the idea into words.

“I,” Nayeon tries. She closes her eyes, hoping it’ll make the heartbreak easier. “Do you regret kissing me?”

Brian exhales, not quite a sigh. More like the air being released from a water bottle after the landing of an airplane. “No,” he says. Nayeon opens her eyes. He’s leaning against the table now, hands still in his pockets. “But I wish it hadn’t happened like that. Caught on camera like that.”

Nayeon feels her heart soar before dropping down to the pit of her stomach, before relocating back to its original place and beating in a way that she swears Brian should be able to hear from halfway across the room. “Me too,” she replies. There’s more she wants to say but she can’t find the words to say it in. Nayeon wants to cry.

Instead, she takes a deep breath. “I think.” She presses her lips together. “That I still want to kiss you. And that I want you to become better at messaging people,” no, that’s not it, “ _me_ back. And this whole fake relationship thing should end. Because I think I want to date you for real.” Nayeon bites her bottom lip to stop it from shaking. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

Brian stands up. He walks over to where she’s standing, and stops right in front of her, glancing down to meet her eyes, reminding Nayeon that she’s forgotten how much taller he is again. She swallows.

“Good,” he says, quiet, face breaking into a bright smile. Nayeon’s always liked the way it lit up his entire face, and up close, it reminds her of when she was fifteen and first in love all over again. “Because that’s how I feel too.”

This time, no one else has to know but: Brian leans down, cups her face in his palms.

And then, he kisses her.


End file.
